


Boys Will Be ... Picture Perfect

by msred



Series: Starting Over [34]
Category: American (US) Actor RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Cute Kids, F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Long-Distance Relationship, Married Life, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26040298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred
Summary: I wasn’t typically someone who was completely glued to my cell phone, dependent on it. But that morning, I was a little frantic. More than a little, probably. Chris had been gone for almost three weeks and I’d been running everything at home during that time.
Relationships: Chris Evans (Actor) & Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor) & Reader, Chris Evans (Actor) & You, Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Reader, Chris Evans (Actor)/You
Series: Starting Over [34]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423663
Comments: 20
Kudos: 48





	Boys Will Be ... Picture Perfect

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [All the Stars in the Sky](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23931442) by [msred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred). 



_ 62 months together, 45 months married, 7 months post-adoption (March, Year 7) _

_ You have  _ **_got_ ** _ to be kidding me _ , I grumbled under my breath as I picked the throw pillows up from the floor and tossed them back onto the couch. Stripping the pillows from the couch was just the latest in my futile attempts to find my cell phone; before that had been dumping my purse, emptying the entire hall tree, and even checking the fridge and freezer. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d left the coffee cream out on the counter and refrigerated something that had no business being there. But it wasn’t in any of those places, even though I was nearly positive I’d brought it downstairs with me when I’d gotten up and gone down to make mine and Brody’s breakfasts. But somewhere between letting the dogs out into the backyard so I could go up to brush my teeth and get dressed, leaving Brody on his own to do the same by himself, at his insistence, then coming back down to let them back in, it had gone MIA. 

Just as I was almost sure I’d brought the phone down with me (I knew I’d shot Chris his daily  _ Good morning, I love you, I miss your face and your beard/chest/eyes/laugh/arms/butt/not-always-pg-asset  _ text, but had I still been upstairs when I’d done it, running a brush through my hair before sweeping it into a ponytail, or had I been in the kitchen, waiting for the English muffins to toast?), I was just as positive I hadn’t taken it back up. Still, I’d practically torn apart the first floor and hadn’t found it, so the only logical next step was to check upstairs.

I wasn’t typically someone who was completely glued to my cell phone, dependent on it. If anything, I’d always been one to set it down, get distracted by something and walk away, then totally overlook it the next time I needed it. I’d carry it into the kitchen to follow a new recipe, then be unable to find it a few hours later when I wanted to put it on the charger before bed. I’d set it next to me on my vanity table to listen to a podcast while getting ready, then be running back for it just before walking out the door to go to school. Goodness knows that hadn’t gotten any better once Brody came along, him calling me out of the room in the middle of a text conversation with a friend or leaving it in his living room book bin after talking to his Nana. It was never that big of a deal, though. It was almost always in one of a few places and I was almost never desperate for it when I did have to look for it; I had more than enough to keep me occupied, between Chris and Brody and our two goofy dogs.

But that morning, I was a little frantic. More than a little, probably. Chris had been gone for almost three weeks and I’d been running everything at home during that time. It certainly wasn’t our longest separation to date, and there would undoubtedly be longer ones in the future. For that matter, I’d been separated from my first husband for up to a year at some points. And I’d missed him, of course I had, but I was a pretty independent person - maybe  _ because _ so much of my first marriage had been spent that way, maybe because of my childhood, maybe just because - and the day-to-day of it hadn’t been bad. I truly didn’t mind living on my own and taking care of myself, I even enjoyed it a good bit of the time. It had been the same way with Chris, mostly. The first time he’d had to go away after we got married, for a film that was shooting in Atlanta, had been a little rough for both of us, just because it came so soon after the wedding and my move to Massachusetts, but we’d worked in a mid-shoot visit, and aside from missing my new husband like crazy, it had gone pretty well. And that had been the case any time he’d had to go away during the first two and a half years of our marriage. 

Then Brody came along, and for the first year that he’d been with us, including the first seven months that he’d been legally  _ ours,  _ Chris had refused to do anything that would take him out of town for more than two nights. He’d worked on a movie in and around Boston that had him sleeping next to me every night and having breakfast with us every morning, even if he did slip into bed hours after I did and go right back to bed after seeing Brody and me off to school on more than one occasion. Then there had been a few times he’d spent a night or two in New York or D.C., for appearances and  _ A Starting Point  _ meetings. But that had been it for that first year. There came a point, though, when he couldn’t put it off any longer. The movie he’d shot close to home was about to premiere, and that meant press - tapings of talk shows and appearances on morning and late night shows - and fittings and even more meetings, all of which were, by their very nature, in New York and L.A. On the one hand, it was convenient that the east and west coast portions had been scheduled back-to-back and could be finished up in one fell swoop. On the other, it meant I was truly parenting on my own, not just for a couple nights, for the first time. 

Brody was an amazing little boy, a dream child, really. When I’d initially asked Chris, full of hesitation and nerves over asking him to modify the way he’d always dreamed of becoming a parent, if we could foster Brody, he’d said that no one gets to design their children. If, however, I had designed my ideal child, Brody would have been it. He was precocious and loving and intelligent and just a little bit sassy. Of course there were moments of struggle and frustration, how could there not be? Just because he was my ideal child didn’t mean he was perfect; no one is. Like anyone, he had his quirks, idiosyncrasies and moments that tested my patience. Still, if I had to go from parenting with Chris, the model dad and partner, to doing it on my own for a short while (a short while that I knew would, eventually, become longer as time went on and Brody grew and Chris started taking on bigger jobs away from home again), I couldn’t ask for a better child to do it with. 

And yet, it was so much harder than I ever expected it to be. Sure, I was stretched more thin than usual without having Chris there to share the load around the house and play back-up chauffeur when I was just too busy with work and workouts and errands and whatever else (or because, sometimes, he just wanted to). But that wasn’t really what had pushed me over the edge leading up to that morning. It wasn’t Brody’s behavior, either. Chris had sat him down the night before he’d left, and he didn’t do the whole ‘man of the house’ thing because, for one thing, we agreed that was too much, mentally and emotionally, to dump on him, and for another, I didn’t want to even unintentionally or subconsciously reinforce the idea that women need men to take care of them. What he had done was tell Brody how much he loved him and how much he would miss him and that I was going to be pulling Mommy/Daddy double-duty, which meant that Brody would need to make sure to be a very good boy and not create even more work for me to do. And, as was his way, Brody had done exactly that. So really, as far as getting through the days, the solo parenting thing had been going so well that I would be embarrassed to talk about it with an actual single parent, because I knew how unrealistic my experience truly was. 

No, the problem wasn’t that I had to temporarily be the Mom/Dad combo, the problem was that, in some backwards way, having Brody there made me miss Chris even more than I had the previous times he’d gone away, made me even more lonely. I loved my one-on-one time with my son, truly, and generally I couldn’t get enough of it. But where I’d always missed Chris as my husband, my romantic partner, when he had to go away, that first time with Brody I also missed him as my parenting partner. Not because I missed the work he did (though he always made sure to do as much as I did, or as much as was reasonable in the time he wasn’t working), but I missed sitting with him on the couch with a drink in each of our hands after putting Brody to bed and decompressing from our days, sharing the things the other had missed. I missed the three of us dancing around each other in the kitchen as we worked on dinner together. I missed him standing at the front door, sending off his  _ best boy and best girl  _ to school with a ruffle of Brody’s hair and a pat to my behind and a kiss for each of us. I missed just sharing it all with him; I always had missed the sharing when he was gone, but I felt it so much more acutely since our family had grown.

All that was bearing down on me as I tried desperately to think of where my phone might be. Because of course it had gone missing when I was actually in a hurry and needed to get out of the house. I’d need to be pulling out of the driveway in five minutes or less if I had any hope of getting Brody to his Saturday art class on time, and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if he missed a class - in January we’d kept him home once because he’d woken up with a low-grade fever, and we’d received a call from the instructor not five minutes after the class ended to check on Brody, not because him missing the class was a problem, but because he was the only student who didn’t miss at least one out of every three or so classes and she was worried about him - but I had fully planned to use every second of the time he was in class to catch up on all the errands I’d fallen behind on. I  _ needed  _ to get Brody to that class, and I  _ needed  _ to have my phone with me when I did, because unlike at home, I couldn’t use my computer to talk to Chris if he called while I was in the grocery store.

I gave one more spin in the center of the living room, just in case it was lying somewhere completely obvious and I’d just been overlooking it, and when I didn’t see it I headed for the hall and made my way up the stairs. By the time I got to the second-floor landing I was lost in thought, trying to retrace my steps from the morning so far, and I walked right past Brody’s room without fully processing what I was seeing through the open doorway. Two steps later though, I stopped in my tracks. I squinted a little, furrowing my brow and pursing my lips and cocking my head to one side, all before taking two steps backward until I was looking straight into my son’s room. There he stood, fully dressed in jeans and a gray baseball tee with blue sleeves, a child-sized Red Sox cap atop his head. The only thing missing to complete the look were the tiny Converse sneakers that I’d thrown haphazardly back into the hall tree just minutes ago after tossing everything out of it. While he was adorable, as always, and the image made my heart clench, that wasn’t what had caught my attention. That honor had gone to the way he was standing. He’d positioned himself smack in the center of the room, right where the beams of morning sun fell across the floor from the window over his bed, and one arm was stretched out in front of him, my missing phone in his hand. He also wore a look of consternation on his little face. 

“Hey there Little Man,” I said, and his eyes shot up to me, “whatcha doin’?”

He huffed and dropped his arm to his side. “I wanted to send a picture to Daddy.”

My heart swelled. According to Chris, Brody was a momma’s boy. And he didn’t say that as a complaint or an insult; on the contrary, he said it with pride. According to him, the only person he’d ever known who was a bigger momma’s boy than Brody, was  _ him _ . He loved that his boy was carrying on that tradition. But while he may have been a bit more attached to me than he was to Chris, he still thought his Daddy hung the moon, and loved him there and back. I hadn’t been so caught up in my own feelings of missing my husband that I couldn’t also see how much Brody missed his Daddy. He got moody on occasion, but mostly I could just tell by how often he asked about him, or the way he insisted he wasn’t interested in doing some of his favorite activities, when really I just knew that he was avoiding doing things that he normally did with Chris because he didn’t want to do them without him. In the beginning, we’d sent pictures to Chris daily, often multiple times a day. But we were getting close to the end (Chris would be home in four days) and I realized as I stood in Brody’s doorway that it had been a few days since we’d sent one. I felt awful. Neither of them had called me out on it, but I realized that maybe I’d gotten caught up in my own sadness a little more than I’d realized.

“Do you want some help?” I asked him as I entered the room. 

He nodded and handed the phone out toward me. “Your phone is too big.”

I chuckled as I took it from him. “I think maybe it’s that your hands are too small, Bud.” He had managed to open the camera and switch it to selfie mode, which was no surprise, considering how many times he’d watched Chris and me doing the same thing as he posed with us for selfies. The camera application opened from the lock screen without unlocking the phone, so he didn’t need me for that, and he’d watched me tap the front camera button enough times that he knew exactly where it was. “Okay,” I switched the phone back to the regular camera and took a few steps back, “how do you want to stand?” I watched as he squared his feet under his hips and shoulders and tucked one hand into his pocket, letting the other hang at his side. He shifted his weight just a bit to one side and tilted his head back a tiny bit to grin up at me from under the bill of his cap. How many pictures of his father standing just like that (often with a beer in his hand, but, you know, Brody was seven) had Brody seen? For that matter, how many times had he seen it in person? I grinned wider. I snapped a couple pictures then cradled the phone in both hands and held it to my chest. “Alright baby, I got it.”

“No, wait,” he said quickly, though I hadn’t yet started moving, “we gotta do Daddy’s favorite.” I was just about to ask what exactly ‘Daddy’s favorite’ was, but before I could, he’d thrown both arms out beside his shoulders, hands up beside his face so that he was almost doing spirit fingers, and widened both his eyes and his mouth into a goofy, almost manic grin, his tongue sticking out just a little. I couldn’t help but laugh as I took the picture. He was right, that was one of Chris’s go-tos for pictures, not with fans as much, but with people he knew - members of his team, co-stars and friends, Scott, and yes, Brody and me. As always, I snapped a few pictures, knowing that at least one would be blurry or messed up in some way, then I closed the camera application and lowered my hands, the phone clasped between them, to just in front of my waist.

“Done?” Brody smiled and nodded, clearly proud of himself. “Awesome, let’s send these to Daddy and get you to art class so I can go to the grocery. Unless you want Cheerios and Brussels sprouts for dinner.” His whole face scrunched and he shook his head frantically. “Okay then,” I laughed, “off to Daddy they go.” I lifted my phone again and unlocked it, going straight to my text messages. I smiled softly when it opened directly to my conversation with Chris, my  _ Good morning  _ message to him the most recent, with his  _ Good night _ message just above it, coming in sometime while I slept and greeting me when I woke up. Brody was at my hip, standing on his tiptoes, as I attached two pictures, one of the ‘normal’ ones that I’d taken first and the silly one that came next, and as I went to tap the little green arrow that would send the pictures, Brody grabbed my hand.

“Mommy!” He sounded scandalized, “What are you doing?” I just looked at him. “We have to add a message!”

“Oh,” I rolled my eyes a little and nodded, “right. Of course. What do you want it to say?”

“Say,” he drew out the word then paused, tugging my hands down to his eye level, so I squatted so that I was closer to his height and he curled both hands around my shoulder and rested his chin on them. “Say  _ From Brody: I got dressed all by myself today so Mommy didn’t have to do it. I picked the clothes Mommy calls my ‘Little Chris’ outfit.”  _ I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud as he went on. _ “We miss you a lot and Mommy was really sad last night so I wanted to be extra good for her today.”  _ I wasn’t laughing anymore. _ “ _ Why did you stop?” He asked as my thumb hovered over the screen, the cursor blinking after the word  _ night _ . Obviously I’d picked up on the fact that he’d not only insisted on dressing himself without supervision or assistance, but also dressed like his daddy; I thought it was adorable. Until then, though, it hadn’t occurred to me that maybe he’d done it for my benefit. That part broke my heart a little bit.

“Sorry baby,” I typed out the rest of the message quickly, keeping my head down so he wouldn’t see the flush on my cheeks or the tears welling in my eyes. “Is that everything?”

“Almost,” he told me cheerfully, “add  _ I love you _ .”

I smiled to myself as I typed the last three words. “Alright, you wanna double check me?” I turned the phone toward him and he scanned the message before nodding and giving me a thumbs up. I nodded sharply once at the same time that I hit ‘send.’

“Thanks Mommy.” I felt the tug on my shoulder as he leaned in to kiss my cheek. I wrapped an arm around his waist to hold him close for an extra second before letting him step back and standing back up to my full height, running my hand up his spine and onto the top of his head over his cap as I did.

“Hey buddy, why did you tell Daddy I was really sad?”

He blinked up at me, “Because you are.”

My breath caught in my chest and I rubbed my thumb just above his ear as I worked to compose myself. “Why do you say that?” I nearly whispered, hoping my voice wouldn’t crack.

He shrugged, “I can just tell. When Daddy first left, you were normal. But now you don’t smile as much. Only when we’re playing together, not when you’re making dinner and driving and watching tv and stuff like you always do when Daddy’s home, and last night after you tucked me in I was going to come ask you if Austin could come over after art class, but you were sitting in your chair watching videos of Daddy and your eyes were all red, so I came back to bed.”

“Oh baby,” I pulled him close and crossed my hands over his back at his shoulders and he wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his face into my stomach, “I’m so sorry you saw that.”

“Why?” He looked up at me, his eyebrows drawn down and his head cocked to one side.

“Well,” I paused. It was a good question, and one that I didn’t really have that good of an answer to. “I just, well, I didn’t want you to know how sad I was.” I adjusted his hat where it had gotten pushed back and a little sideways during our hug as he continued to blink up at me.

“But why?” he asked again.

I sighed. “I guess since I’m the mommy I was just trying to not make you more sad too. I wanted to be strong for you.”

“It’s okay to feel your feelings, Mommy.”

I coughed out a half-laugh, half-sob. And so it began - my son being able to use my own words back at me. “You are so right about that. How’d you get so smart, Little Man?”

He furrowed his brow and darted his eyes side-to-side, thinking, before answering, “You and Daddy taught me. And Mommy Mallory.”

I nodded slowly and smiled a soft, sad smile. “Your Mommy Mallory taught you a lot of great things. Your Daddy and I just want to make sure we don’t let her down.”

“I think you’re doing pretty good.”  
“Yeah?” I laughed and he nodded.

“But don’t hide stuff from me, Mommy.” My eyes went wide at how serious his face was. “I miss Daddy too, it’s okay. And we have each other.”

I held him tight and nearly doubled myself over so that I could kiss his cheek. Have I mentioned yet that I have the ideal son? “Thank you, baby,” I murmured against the top of his head, “I’ll remember that. I promise.” I cleared my throat as I stood back upright, and with one hand still curled around his opposite shoulder and the other tilting his face up toward me, I pulled him away. “Okay, now go downstairs and get your shoes on before you’re  _ really  _ late for art class. I’m right behind you.”

Brody nodded and took off out of the room, and as I heard his footsteps thudding down the stairs, I pulled out my phone and opened the camera yet again. I switched it back to selfie mode and held it up until I was looking at my own face - pink nose, red-rimmed eyes, splotchy cheeks and all - and snapped a picture of myself wearing the most sincere half-smile I could manage. I opened the text messaging app again and composed yet another message to Chris.  _ He’s right, I am sad and I do miss you like crazy, but everything’s fine, please don’t worry. I just miss my incredible partner-in-life. But as our amazing son pointed out, we have each other. I can’t wait to touch you and be held by you again, but until then, I’m holding things down here, I promise. I love you. So fucking much. For ALL the reasons.  _ I knew the message wouldn’t be enough to ease his mind. I knew my phone would be ringing the second he woke up and saw the texts from us. And I loved him a little more, if possible, for that. But until then, spurred on by my son’s advice to  _ feel my feelings _ , I attached the selfie I’d just taken and hit send.

**Author's Note:**

> So my schedule/'real life' is still a little wonky, and all I can promise is that I'm doing the best I can to keep posting at least semi-regularly. But again, if I miss a week or don't get things posted in my normal timeline, I'm not going anywhere, I just have a lot happening at the moment. This little family (and the couple that created it) still has a lot of stories left to tell!


End file.
